Alien Conquest: (The Warrior's Prize) An Alien SciFi Romance (2 page)

“And what is the Arena?”

He smirked. “Just what it sounds like, sweetheart. Think Gladiators, eh? The fighters fight and the powerful watch and whoever wins gets glory and some political clout. But don’t worry, you won’t be fighting. If you work with me here I’ll pitch you at market as a healer.”

“If I
work
with you?” She narrowed her eyes.

The captain’s smirk sharpened. “You’re a very pretty girl.”

“My name is Alaina and I’m not a girl. And I don’t give a shit if you think I’m pretty.”

Rua arched an eyebrow. “Well, I do. And you can spend the next solar in here with me, having a nice time, or I can throw you back in the hold with the other slaves.”

“Have a nice time.” Alaina frowned. “You want me to have sex with you?”

Rua nodded. “Small price to pay, no?”

“Fuck you. I’m not sleeping with you. You can put me wherever you want.”

Rua scowled and rolled up to his feet, that device in his hand again. “I said I’d help you, sugar, but quid pro quo, only. I’m no rapist. You agree to sleep with me and I’ll see you sold as a healer to a nice, respectable master. You refuse, and you’re on the block on your own.”

Alaina gazed back at him, jaw set.

He wasn’t even an unattractive man, but she hated him. He was handsome in a rugged trucker kind of way, with his salt and pepper hair and bright eyes. Even the deep lines on his face did not diminish his good looks, only made it plain that he’d lived a hard life. But only a lecherous son of a bitch would hold a woman hostage like this, and she didn’t want his help. Even if she knew she needed it.

“No.”

Rua’s scowl lingered a moment, but then he sighed and his expression lightened, and he shrugged. “Your loss, love.”

“You’re disgusting.”

He chuckled and shook his head. “You have no idea what you’re in for. I hardly rate on the disgusting scale you’re about to face.” Then he held up the device. “Might as well get this done and then you can go right back to the hold.”

Alaina’s spine straightened. “Don’t.”

“Relax.” He came closer and she lifted her bound hands, balled into fists, but he just caught her by the manacle and wrenched her arms to the side, pinning her wrists to the bed. “It’s a translator microchip. Once it’s injected, you’ll be able to understand all the alien languages. Which will really help, I suspect, when your future master is giving you commands. Unfortunately, it can take a while to accustom itself to your body. So this may sting.”

“Don’t!” she cried again.

Captain Rua put his lips close to her ear. “While you’re writhing in pain, think about how much nicer it would have been to suffer through this in my nice, warm bed.”

“Go to hell,” she hissed through her teeth.

“I like that spunk. It’s gonna get you in trouble at the Arena, though. I look forward to seeing someone break you of all that spirit, Alaina.”

“Asshole.”

Rua put the device’s muzzle to her throat and pulled the trigger, and then Alaina couldn’t breathe. Pain flooded through her, stinging from her jaw all the way down to her toes. She felt like she was on fire, and black spots burst through her vision. She felt herself hit the mattress, flailing, and she gasped as her lungs burned. Then the pain was too much, and she passed out.

When Alaina came to, she was back in the hold, just like Rua promised. It was dark again, and when she struggled to sit up, she realized at least she was no longer bound at the wrists and ankles. But they’d stripped her of her sweater and her boots, so she was barefoot in her trousers and t-shirt, and she lifted a hand to her throat and found that they’d fit her with a collar. Like a dog.

She couldn’t help it. Tears burned her eyes.

She thought maybe a combination of shock and adrenaline had carried her through those first hours, waking on the ship and seeing the aliens, and then her encounter with Captain Rua. Now with none of those chemicals in her bloodstream, the crushing truth of it all hit her. She was
actually
kidnapped by aliens and going to be sold as a slave and be surrounded by strange creatures on strange worlds for the rest of her life. How would she ever go home again?

Alaina would never have called herself sentimental. Her life until this point had not been
easy
, and she pushed through, certain at least of her own worth and what she wanted out of life. She always pushed through. She was orphaned as a teenager when her parents died in a drunk driving accident, and she’d pushed through the foster system and made it out of high school alive. She’d pushed through when she’d lost her college scholarship for field hockey because of a knee injury, gotten her paramedic license and paid the rest of her own way for an education. Then she’d worked as a paramedic, saving and saving because she wanted to buy a nice house and maybe get a dog. Family wasn’t really on her radar but she always thought
some day
she would meet the right guy and she’d have a kid and a family, and that was what she figured the future would eventually hold.

All of that evaporated now.

Alaina was tough. She was thick-skinned and gritty and it had been a long, long time since she’d found herself crying in the dark. Now she put her face into her hands and let the tears flow, because she didn’t know how to stop them, and there was no one to tell her to stop crying. Or that it would all be okay. She didn’t know how to step back from it all and make a plan, like she normally would, because there was no planning anything at the opposite end of the universe from everything she knew.

She felt a touch to her shoulder and jumped, head jerking up, and blinked through her tears to find someone suddenly sitting beside her. Or maybe they’d been there all along and she just had been too engrossed in her own misery to realize it.

It was an alien, but it was not
so
alien-looking. Certainly less strange than the big ones in the helmets. Rua had called them Ankaa. This alien was delicate-looking, willowy and thin and pale, female if her physical anatomy was any indication. In the darkness, Alaina could make out the curves of breasts and hips in a flowing dress, and full lips in an otherwise fragile face, and then there were the antlers. Small and twisting, but prominent all the same just for their strangeness. The alien smiled and offered Alaina a handkerchief.

“For your tears,” she said softly.

Alaina took the handkerchief with trembling fingers. “Thanks.”

The alien tilted her head a little, as if taking Alaina in. “You are human, like the Captain. I’ve never seen another one before.”

Alaina sniffed and dabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief. “Yeah. I’m Alaina.”

“My name is Yfia,” the alien said. “I am Jiayi of the Giedi system.”

“I have no idea where that is,” Alaina admitted.

Yfia smiled again. “No, you wouldn’t. Your people are primitive. The Arena will be a challenge for you, I think.”

“Thanks,” Alaina muttered.

Yfia made a clicking sound with her tongue. “But the Arena is not all bad, child. For some it holds glory, and a better life. The high families of the Arena offer us riches beyond imagining if we prove worthy of them.”

Alaina blinked, looking at Yfia again. “Wait. Are you saying you
chose
to be here?”

Yfia nodded. “I volunteered to be sold for the honor of my family and my planet.”

Alaina frowned. “I don’t understand.”

Yfia’s smile was patient. “The three systems have been at peace for thousands of years because of the Arena. Wars are fought there, politics sorted, and to keep my planet free of tyranny I will fight.”

Alaina cleared her throat, looking Yfia over. “I hope that works out for you.”

The alien sat up a little straighter. “I am more dangerous than I look. You are not. You would do well to play to your strengths. You are exotic. Perhaps a house or pleasure slave.”

Alaina felt nauseated. “I don’t want to be anyone’s slave.”

Yfia made that clicking sound again. “The only way to gain your freedom now is to fight your way through the tiers of the Arena. And, human child, you would never survive. You are too fragile. Content yourself with a safe, cared-for existence in a high family’s house. And hope that you are not purchased by a whoremonger or a dominus with a cruel heart.”

Briefly, Alaina thought of going to Rua.

He’d offered to help her, after all. Was the price of having sex with him so high if he could help place her somewhere she might at least be able to live with?

But just as quickly she knew she’d made the right decision. She’d have hated herself for letting him compromise her. No. She would push through. She always pushed through. She wiped the tears that remained staining her cheeks away with Yfia’s handkerchief.

“So there are three systems. Does that mean there are three races? Three houses? What?”

Yfia shook her head when Alaina offered her back the handkerchief. “You keep that. There are three systems, three races. Many houses.” She put a hand to her breast. “I am Jiayi. Our current masters are Ankaa. The helmets.” She touched her head. “They cannot breathe but in the liquid that covers their home planets. So they must wear the helmets to live.” Then she brushed a hand down her arm. “And the Errai. They are vicious and beautiful. Some of their skin is soft like yours, and some is hard, scales. Their fighters do well in the Arena.”

Alaina nodded. “I think I’d like to be bought by your people, Yfia, if I have to be bought.”

Yfia smiled. “My people treat their slaves quite well. And you are nice to look at. This could be your fate, indeed.”

The idea of being anyone’s slave was repulsive, but Yfia was giving her information, and Alaina knew she had to find a way to use it. If she got purchased by these gentle-looking aliens, maybe she could find a way to escape. Ingratiate herself, get them to trust that she could be happy with them, and then run like hell once she had a better idea
how
to.

As she had that thought, the lights flickered on again. Alaina realized that Yfia was
gorgeous
. By any standard of beauty, the pale alien woman was stunning. Her antlers were white bone, curling gently up from her forehead, short but still somehow elegant. Her skin was pale to the point of nearly glistening. Her eyes wide-set and larger than human eyes, her cheekbones high and mouth expressively full. Alaina wondered how she was supposed to be appealing to the Jiayi when she looked nothing at all like one of them.

The blast doors opened and Captain Rua and his thugs walked in.

The captain clapped his hands. “Your attention please, passengers. We’ll be docking with the station momentarily. You’ll have an hour in the baths to get yourselves presentable and then it’s off to market.”

He looked right at Alaina, and she felt a shiver go through her.

“Time to make some money,” he announced. “Everyone up and in line please!”

Yfia touched Alaina’s shoulder and then got to her feet. Alaina followed, tucking the handkerchief into her pocket. “Baths?” she muttered, following the Jiayi woman as she stepped into line with the other slaves.

All of them, Alaina realized, adhered to Yfia’s descriptions of the three races, except her. There were other tall Jiayi, some with even taller antlers and some with shorter, in colors ranging from the same bone white as Yfia’s to a shiny black. There were other helmets, too, the Ankaa, though they were not as large as Rua’s crewmates. Slender ones and short ones, and Alaina determined some of them were women, though all their faces remained hidden by the helmets. It seemed all these creatures were humanoid, at least so far as Alaina could see, with all the same parts she had, and just different...additions.

There were a few of the Errai as well, though they looked most like humans to her. Except she could see a patch of scale like on a snake, licking along a cheekbone or a throat or a bare hand. There were maybe twenty slaves in all, by Alaina’s count, once they’d lined up according to Rua’s instructions.

“Oh yes,” Yfia whispered. “The baths are lovely. They will scrub you clean and dress you for the market.”

“What does that mean?”

Yfia looked her over, eyebrows arching delicately. “Well, you’ll be put into a slave’s gown, child. As you ought.”

“Great,” Alaina muttered.

She was beginning to realize no matter what Yfia said about this whole process, she was going to have to let go of her dignity if she was going to get through it. Or at least hide it, lock it away in a secret place in her heart, and forget it existed for a while. Same with her pride. But she would not lose these things, no. She would simply hide them until she could make use of them again. She would play the slave, but she would not allow herself to truly become one. These strange creatures would not break her, and she would see Earth again. She told herself this over and over again as they were marched off the ship and onto the gigantic space station that held the Arena.

Yfia explained the Arena to Alaina as they were escorted from the docking bay to the baths. It was in fact an enormous, city-sized space station situated at the boundaries of the three systems. It was divided into four sections. Each of the systems had its own smaller city, and then of course there was the Arena itself, and the market, and that’s where they were now. They wouldn’t be allowed into any of the other sectors of the station until they’d been purchased. And if no one purchased them, they’d become slaves to the Arena and the market itself, doomed to spend their days cleaning blood from the sands, or scrubbing the bath walls, or the market stalls.

And the baths were
ridiculous
.

Alaina had never seen anything like it. She thought of the tiny spa she’d gone to once when her partner got her a gift certificate for her birthday, and these baths were so far from anything she could have imagined it was almost laughable.

They were escorted through marble doors, or what Alaina could only think of as marble no matter what material it really might have been. All the walls were the same beautiful marbled black and white and gray, and the floors were the same. The air was thick with moisture, fog and steam pooling around corners and against the ceiling. Frosted glass partitions separated singular bathrooms from the huge, Alaina realized
public
, bathing areas.